Field of the Disclosure
The present invention relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly to systems and methods for transmitting and receiving streams in a network including a plurality of transmission media.
Description of the Related Art
There are a variety of networking technologies which are currently commonly used to build communication networks. Some examples include wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies, powerline communication technologies, Ethernet, and 802.16 (WiMAX), among other networking technologies. It is even relatively common (e.g., in a household setting) for multiple such communication networks to exist in the same space. In such situations, hybrid networking devices, which can couple to other hybrid networking devices using multiple different networking technologies, thereby forming a more robust hybrid network, would be particularly useful.
However, the communication mechanisms (e.g., the transmission media), and protocol specifics (e.g., device and topology discovery, bridging to other networks, etc.) for individual networking technologies are typically unique to each networking technology. Bridging such diverse networking technologies to form an effective hybrid network is a challenging goal, and improvements in a variety of areas of hybrid networking would be desirable.